On the Other Hand...
by Jim Davies
The UN: Sinister Menace, or Toothless Tiger?
That international club on the East River has been in the news this year from two different directions.
One, we've noticed its hopeless attempt to "keep the peace" in Bosnia, where there was no peace to keep, and now how thousands of its agents are flailing around like beached whales. Not much menace there.
But two, since the OKC bombing we've been told that many Americans fear that the UN is going one day soon to take over government of the USA and remove all our liberties. Given the toothlessness of its operations to date, are these people crazy, or what?
That's certainly the impression the media seem happy to create, when they reported on the various Patriot and Militia groups who were at one time suspected of complicity in the bombing. Well-meaning wackos, they seemed to say, but with little understanding of real life.
Well, unlike the major media, this column doesn't leave it there; for as regular readers know, I too took the trouble to visit with some of those folk, and I didn't find them one little bit wacko. And yet, there did seem to be a surprising preoccupation with the United Nations. How so?
What I found was that those more superficial reporters have left us with an unfinished story; one that (by design, I wonder?) makes those who fear a UN takeover seem foolish, when in fact the scenario in mind is quite credible.
It may or may not ever happen, and I have no take on its probability, but I am quite satisfied that the idea is by no means all that silly. Here's why.
Escaping the Limits
Those folk recognize, as I certainly do, that in their very nature, all governments hate to be restricted; their members want one thing and one only, and as much of it as they can get, and that's POWER. It's the drug, to which every one of them is hopelessly addicted.
Now, when the Founders set up this country they knew that too, and they tried very hard to set limits on that power. They wrote a Constitution, whose prime aim is to place fences around what governments here are allowed to do. After 200 years of neglect there's little of it left in practice, but even today the Pols give it lip service; only recently when Clinton and Gingrich performed their duo in Claremont, NH, the latter remarked that the Founders had designed a system that "no dictator could take over and 'make work'." Clinton quickly chipped in, just as if he'd been trying hard to do just that, and said "and they sure made a good job of it." Laughter all round.
Behind that affable, aw-shucks facade, all of them loathe that fence like poison and would scrap it in an instant if they could; even now, while the tatters of it remain, every single one of the ten Bill of Rights has been trampled all over by the Feds alone. Yes, even #3; for while no standing army is "quartered" on us, we are anyway forced to surrender enough to keep it quartered in barracks. Often in this column you read ways in which they shred the others; and if you need to review them, send $15 for 100 back issues.
So, how does this passionate but well-hidden wish to be rid of Constitutional restrictions on power relate to the notion of a UN takeover? Rather easily, when we first recognize the passion of that wish and then understand that it would be not so much a takeover as a staged surrender.
Here's the theory. At some moment quite soon, the Feds will stimulate a major crisis. It's not hard; governments are very good at doing that sort of thing. An emergency of some kind arises. It might be that if O.J. is convicted, race riots will erupt nationwide, not just in South LA; it might even be built around a genuine, natural disaster like "The Big One", the expected major earthquake in California. Or perhaps the dollar utterly collapses. Or it may be that Zhironovsky wins the '96 elections in Russia and threatens nuclear war unless Alaska is retuned to Mother Russia. Like I say, it's not hard.
Then, in the middle of the crisis, the Feds Declare an Emergency. (Sidebar: some think one has already been quietly declared, and is already in force.) Under laws they have already written, that would transfer all power to the President, who would, in order permanently and lawfully to suspend all remaining Constitutional rights, invite the United Nations to take over the reins of government, by a United States Treaty. In a double move as neat as any shell game on the sidewalk, you and I would have lost irretrievably all our freedoms and all rights, in Law as well as in practice.
It's not, of course, that we would then be under the thumb of Boutros Boutros Whatsisname. Part of the deal with the UN would be that the same gang of villains as called them in would get to keep all power, but in its name; it's just that instead of wearing the hat of Uncle Sam, the avuncular agent of a free people electing whom they wish, they would don the blue beret of the formerly toothless tigers and bring with them all command of the military and police forces that you and I have been forced to purchase.
Thus would end the greatest experiment in freedom the human race has ever known. That, at least, is the theory. And while I'm not going yet to say I believe it's particularly probable, it does make a whole lot more sense than the gutted, scornful version we get from the evening news. And anyway, I didn't sit here on April 18th and say it was very probable that the next day, someone would bomb a Federal building full of people; so we ought not to dismiss this theory, rather to watch for the first sign that Slick Willie is trying it on.
Of course, it's quite possible that this is all a false alarm; that the Pols will never use this particular trick to strip away our rights. But, rely on it: if they don't use that trick, sooner or later they will certainly try another.